Protocol

which is the law and the whole of the law. Again! Not taught. I didn’t go into the “b-room” with my Dad, intent on a wide-ranging conversation, only to be silenced by a stony shake of the head as he drew his sword from the stone. And it’s not just talking. I mean, there’s a lot of things I don’t do in there. I almost never sculpt.

BradGuigar was in the office visiting Scott, and apparently he doesn’t have this rule, because while I was engaged in the aforementioned process he greeted me with a level of volume and enthusiasm that I had previously thought was reserved for lottery wins. I tried to respond in the affirmative, because grey silence would be even more weird than it was already, but what eventually arrived at my lips was an earnest but anguished squonk. It was the sound of a devil goose. It was the sound an oboe might make, squonked in the jungle by a curious orangutan.

At what is now called PAX Prime, Warren Spector delivered easily the most challenging keynote we’ve ever been host to. It’s fair to say I’m obsessed with Warren Spector, and having been behind the curtain for every keynote since we started having them, watching him crack the shell of every previous speech and dig out the nut was… Well, it’s what you hope will happen when you meet a person you respect. I was floored.

I was floored, and I expect to stay down there: we invited Jane McGonigal for her pioneering work creating and thinking about games, and what games (or the way our brains react to game systems) can accomplish while they are improving our lives generally. She also happens to have a book out, Reality Is Broken, which brought her into mainstream focus. If you aren’t already familiar with her work, a trip through her portfolio is something that could easily eat a day or more. It’s one of the deepest rabbit holes available.

The only advice I have for you is this: remember to breathe.

PAX East is here, it’s really here. She’ll be opening up the show here in just a few hours, and I will be backstage with my hand over my mouth absorbing wisdom, whenever I’m not looking for something she could sign.